Segmental context effects on temporal realization of Estonian quantity

The Estonian three-way quantity system is usually described by a robust foot-level compensatory mechanism of the stressed and the unstressed syllable durations. Beneath the three-way foot-level contrast, the quantity oppositions can be realized by seven different segmental combinations of the initial vowel and the following intervocalic consonant length. In this work we investigated the effects of context dependency on durational patterns marking this 7-way contrast. We observed a strong influence of the word initial consonant and vocalic quality context on the durations of individual segment in different quantity combinations. The results show a complex relation between the intrinsic phonemic properties and suprasegmental features. Finally, we argue that the effects of segmental context and natural variation of phonetic realization might in some cases combine to be greater than average differences between quantity degrees.